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Updated: June 27, 2025
The limb may even have become smaller than the other, but it grows so as to come up with the healthy one: this will be the case though the fomentation is done equally to both. It is a curious thing that the body is so constituted that general healthy growth tends to bring on weaker parts more rapidly than stronger ones, so as to restore proper proportions.
Experimenting with a pigeon upon one occasion, after the heart had wholly ceased to pulsate, and the auricles too had become motionless, I kept my finger wetted with saliva and warm for a short time upon the heart, and observed that under the influence of this fomentation it recovered new strength and life, so that both ventricles and auricles pulsated, contracting and relaxing alternately, recalled as it were from death to life.
In any case of fever, when a patient is too weak to bear the hot fomentation and cold towels, we would recommend rubbing the feet and limbs if cold with hot oil, and the stomach and chest, and if possible the back with soap lather.
Exercise, perfect cleanliness, the early morning sluice-down with cold water, and a quassia tonic. He may need a laxative as well. Locally Dusting with oxide of zinc or the violet powder of the nurseries, a lotion of lead, or arnica. Fomentation, followed by cold water, and, when dry, dusting as above. Itching all over, with or without scurf. Sometimes thickening.
There is need first that this general cold should be dealt with, and a general heat produced by some means or other. This is usually best done by packing feet and legs in a hot blanket fomentation. But this again is not an easy matter when cramp prevails. If you move the limbs in the least the cramp comes on, and the patient screams with pain.
The hot fomentation and cold towels have both been tried, but there are now and again symptoms that show us that the root of the evil has not been reached. We try cold cloths on this knee, but they greatly increase the pain. We at length suspect that it is not the knee that is seriously diseased, but the root of one or more of the nerves that supply the link from the lower part of the spine.
I told him, and he exclaimed, "Shut it up, please," and sat down with his back to it, resigning his hand to me, and thanking me warmly when the fomentation brought some relief, and when I asked if I could do any more for him he seemed undecided, extracted some letters from his pocket with his two-fifths of a hand, and sent Dora to his room for his writing-case.
It may then be unrolled and unfolded so as to permit proper wrapping round the limb to be fomented. Care must be taken not to burn the patient, or give any shock by applying the fomentation too hot. It must be comfortable. See Heat And Weakness. Sometimes fomentation may seem to increase the pain, say in a swelled limb, and yet we should persevere in the treatment.
Whenever the injection of cold water fails, and especially when it rather increases the complaint, and vomiting or sickness shows that the attack is of the nature of British Cholera, you will do well to pack feet and legs in a good blanket fomentation. Put a little olive oil on before and after such a packing. One application may be sufficient; but it may be necessary to repeat the packing.
In cases of failure of the large hip-joints, or of the lower limbs, in sciatica and lumbago, the armchair fomentation is of great use; also when running sores exist from one of the hips or lower back, or even in numbness or lack of vitality in the feet and toes. It is referred to under the headings of the troubles in which it is of advantage.
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